Mashup

Page Created by Samantha Herscher Definition:  A creative combination or mixing of content from different sources. Examples: web applications that take information from different sources and combine it and present it in a unique way. mixing two songs together into one. mixing video clips to make one clip.

Best practices for teachers: Teachers can use mashups to get students interested in what they are learning. For example, a teacher can take the beat of a popular song and change the words to teach the students new information. This will help the students remember the new information because it is linked to something they like. It would be easier for a student to remember the information if they remember in the tune of a favorite song. Another type of mashup a teacher could make is taking important lines from different famous speeches. The teacher can find lines that teach important lessons and put them together into a mashup to use to teach the students. Teachers can take clips of videos and combine them to teach a lesson. Here is a video mashup with clips from different presidential speeches. Inauguration Mashup Teachers can also have have students create a mashup as an assignment. They can find songs/video clips/etc. that have a common theme and specific parts of the different songs together to make one song that relays an important message. A fun assignment for elementary students would be to make a story mashup. This is where the students would write different parts of a story and put them all together to create a complete story. This can be done in many ways. One way is that the students work in groups and each student writes down an idea for the story. Then they have to write their story incorporating all of their ideas. Annotated web links:
 * [|Students Creating Mashups Article]This article is about a class that had to create mashups and study music, harmony, and music composition. It also tells what the students thought about the activity.
 * [|How to make a Mashup Video] This site explains step by step how to create a mashup video. You can read about choosing your material, putting it together, editing it and adding music. It also gives some good tips about making a mashup video.
 * Education Mashups Article This article explains the importance of teaching different subjects together. It is important to show how the different subjects can relate instead of only learning math at one time and social studies in another. It explains that this helps students come up with more creative solutions to problems. They can use math to solve a science question. The article gives pros and cons about this type of teaching.

Works Cited Nations, Daniel. "What is a Mashup?." About.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2013.  Williams, Albert. "Mashups: The new breed of Web app." Developer Works. N.p., 22 Aug. 2011. Web. 21 Sept. 2013. .